The Morning Preparation for the Apocalypse,

Now Showing, Next to Infidelity

Salt Lake City, UT

 

Lee woke up to the sound of Analise crying at the foot of their bed. He rolled over and sat up. Where were they? Oh, yes, Jacob’s place. Becca was snoring next to him, face down, hair flayed on the pillow like a drowning woman. He was worried about her.

Lee got up; his boxers scrunched. He grabbed Analise, hushed her, then tried to put his pants on with one arm. When this didn’t work, he put Analise back down in her Pack ‘n’ Play, which prompted continued crying, threw his pants on, a shirt, and took Analise into the living room. He changed her on the floor and then made her a bottle in the kitchen. When she began to get fussy again, he walked around, bouncing her.

Becca hadn’t been the same since Analise was born (his and the doctor’s diagnosis was post-partum depression, but she did not agree). Recently she had started drinking more. She’d gained weight, Lee thought, even before Analise was born. He did his best not to make it a thought of judgment, more of a mere fact. Her dad had just passed away after all.

He looked out the window. A large family of what he assumed to be of Somalian or Ethiopian descent was waiting at the bus stop below him. The women wore colorful dresses of red, black, and turquoise, some light-brown henna twisting and dotting the outside of their forearms. The men, young, wore black-and-white Nikes, fitted jeans. The men were young because all the older men were dead—so Lee assumed.

One of them had a T-shirt with Kendrick on it. Lee knew they must be refugees. Not because they were tattered looking; if anything, they were quite done up and fashionable—the women with dangling jewelry and the young men with crisp haircuts—no, but because this was Salt Lake City and anyone not white, and not clearly American black or Latino, was usually a refugee. Salt Lake had a large refugee population, one of the largest in the country next to places like Minneapolis and Atlanta.

Lee decided to go for a quick drive up South Temple to the U. He assumed Becca would continue to sleep off her hangover, and Analise looked like she needed to go somewhere. So, for a quick drive it was.

But first, Lee had to dress Analise—his least favorite part of fatherhood. Sure, jeggings were cute and all, but placing the feet of an infant through tiny holes of tight fabric while they squealed and writhed? Trying to pole their arms through a tiny shirt without snapping their neck? He didn’t have the finesse required.

Lee reluctantly placed Analise on the floor and began the dressing. He took her pajamas off, easy, then tugged a onesie over her head, gently. Fine. He fastened the first button on her onesie and moved to the second and then the third, but—shit. He had messed up the order of the buttons and had to begin again, like he often did when buttoning his own plaid shirts. Those stupid little fastening things. Lee didn’t know what he hated more, buttons or zippers. Once the onesie was on and correctly buttoned, he scrunched up the leggings like Becca taught him. He placed one foot through, then began scrunching the other. But before he could put the other foot through, she had shaken off the first one with her pulsing leg. Lee sighed and began again. He straightened her with his palm on her stomach, trying not to press down too tight. One foot through, two. He pulled the pants up to the waist and . . . done. Whew.

Then came the car seat. He placed Analise down into the plastic shell and dug for the buckle under her bottom. Then he placed her arms through the shoulder straps, one by one. Then came the challenging part—buckling it all together free of skin or clothes pinching. He clicked one buckle in across the chest, two. Now to connect it to the bottom. He had to pull with all his might, sit Analise, readjust her, and try again. Click. Finally. He felt a swab of sweat on his forehead. Now he could begin his peaceful morning drive.

Goddamn, kids were a lot of work.

The sky was grey and cloudy, and the sun still shone tangerine through the haze of the fires. A perfect coin. The Wasatch Mountains were still snowless, as they had been for the last several years. Traffic was thick, as the U was not close to any major freeways—situated on the top of the east bench three miles above Salt Lake City—and so the morning commute to the university tended to clog up the surrounding area.

He drove up 100 South past a modern-looking house that appeared to have been built from shipping containers. The large square windows were made of a blue glass and outlined by a deep brown, mahogany siding. Some sort of corrugated-charcoal-metal substance made up the exterior of the door and fence. It was the type of house he had always wanted to live in. Modern, sleek, and recycled.

After a quick tour through the avenues—a neighborhood directly north of downtown on a steep hill—Lee found himself on Mario Capecchi drive, by Primary Children’s Hospital, basically the top of the hill above Salt Lake. On his right he could see the entire Salt Lake Valley, the downtown skyscrapers shining brightly from a small ray of sun that broke through the morning clouds. He could see the Great Salt Lake and the Kennecott smokestack in a depression of land to the west. The Wasatch Mountains east and south. The air was dry. The grass yellow. The Wasatch Mountains rose up steep on his left covered with big sagebrush, Colorado blue spruce, Gambel oak, Douglas fir trees, and outcropped with granite at the top. Their name Wasatch, or Wuhu’Seai in the Ute language, meaning “mountain pass” or “low place in a high mountain,” or possibly “frozen penis” in the Ute language, depending on which etymology you prefer—experts disagreed Lee had learned in a class at the U. The lake-filled Uinta (Yoov-we-teuh, or “pine tree, pine forest”). Mountains rose even further east behind them on the way to Wyoming and Colorado. The Great Salt Lake lay to his right.

For some reason he thought of his first wife, Mandy, a devout Mormon and high school girlfriend he had married pretty much right out of high school. She was cute, blonde, and almost jokingly sweet. They had married in the Temple, with the underwear and all, and got along fine for the first couple months. But things began to change. Lee stopped going to sacrament, kept putting off his mission, and eventually abandoned the whole mission thing to tour with his band over the summer.

Mandy and her parents were less than thrilled about this. He tried to explain what he was going through, but he didn’t know where to start. Doubts had begun to creep into his mind. Everyone he talked to said they were “of the devil,” including Mandy and her parents, and that he must resist temptation.

“Have faith,” they said.

“Just believe,” they said.

“Pray,” they said.

It wasn’t like Lee stopped believing in his faith overnight. It was gradual. He wanted to believe. He really did. And at night, falling asleep, even with his doubts, he worried about his salvation, and wished he had someone to talk to about all of it.

What if he was in the wrong and would spend eternity away from his family? Away from his loved ones regretting this mistake? What if it really was the devil tempting him to leave? Lee had felt the crushing weight of eternity weighing down upon him. How was any mortal to make such decisions? He remembered the story his dad used to tell him of a man who had left the LDS Church and then later returned. The man had said when he left the Church it was like someone had reached up and turned the lights out. So, the man repented and came back.

Throughout this time of doubt, Lee had felt like he did when he was climbing Angels Landing in Zion National Park, clinging to the black iron railing bolted along the spine near the top, a twelve-hundred-foot drop to his left and an ominous, two-foot wide trail before him. He had frozen in the middle, unsure if he should move forward or return backward, both equally perilous decisions as he was already in the middle. The knowledge that if he pushed forward, he would have to repeat a return ascent back down the spine only increased his paralysis.

Analise let out a small string of noises from her mouth. He glanced in the rearview mirror at her as she sat in her car seat. She opened one eye, looking like a pirate, then closed it. The veins on her shut eyelids shone a bright, electric blue as she yawned and settled back down. He glanced at the gas tank and made a mental note to stop at the next maverick they came to.

Becca had developed severe post-partum depression after Analise was born and was completely zonked at their house. Both Rebecca and Emily took shifts in helping to take care of Analise, while Becca did nothing but sleep and take out her breasts for feeding. Lee had wondered what he’d gotten himself into. And now here they were, a year and half later, trying to make it work. And the dream that had become reality was now vapid and fleeting. A cake that fails to rise. Becca still feeling the aftershocks of PPD.

No, they were making it work, Lee told himself. He couldn’t let himself think any differently. If he was being really honest, his only real regret in marrying Becca so quickly was that he wished he had slept with more than two women in his life (perhaps explaining his recent actions). He knew that sleeping with more women wouldn’t have really made him that much happier and probably would have been sexually awkward and messy, if not a never-ending endeavor, i.e., how many women would be enough? But still, he hadn’t been able to put the thought out of his mind.

Sexuality was confusing when you’d repressed it for most of your life.

Lee hadn’t had many thoughts like this, regarding Mandy, since Analise was born. He didn’t have time to. And this was a good thing. He liked the new him that was being a dad. He liked not having the mental capacity to fixate on the past or future, nostalgia or regret. He liked that he’d stopped drinking, smoking, masturbating, and shoving pizza down his throat in a depressive stupor.

Lee headed back toward Jacob’s place downtown where they had crashed the night before—Jacob’s apartment having a surprisingly spacey, extra bedroom. Analise smiled in her car seat. Born tiny and frail at six pounds, eight ounces, she was now getting bigger and brighter every day. He scanned the radio stations for any news of the volcano, but the only news he heard was that the situation was under control and being “monitored.”

As Lee drove around, he thought about what he’d done last fall. The mistake he’d made. How fucking shitty of a person he was. He hadn’t even admitted it aloud to himself for fear someone else would be listening in. He’d, well . . . he’d cheated on Becca. There. He said it. If at the very least admitting it to himself.

He was now one of those people he never thought he’d be. A cheating asshole. And now, how he could admit this to Becca? He didn’t know.

Lee looked at his phone. It was still early, and a sudden idea popped into his head. He should swing by the hardware store, he thought, buy some emergency supplies. Perhaps one of those five-gallon jugs to hold water. Some heat reflective emergency blankets. What with the temperatures rising, the wildfires increasing, the threat of a Supervolcano, you could never be too careful. What if they got stranded somewhere along the drive?

On the way back to Jacob’s he stopped at Ace Hardware. He bought a small shovel, swiss army knife, small axe, tarp, water purifier, five-gallon jug, some duct tape rope, and several now coveted and pricey N95 masks (best for filtering out ash and smoke). The shelves seemed light and understocked; some items completely sold out. He couldn’t believe the N95s were still there. They were the best, as the most important thing for a volcano eruption was to find a well-fitting mask.

Analise seemed to enjoy riding around in the lumber store shopping cart, though. She kept grabbing and oohing for anything shiny and metal.

The total was well over $200 worth of doomsday/apocalypse/emergency preparedness supplies.

Afterward, he took the supplies and then buried them beneath the bags, camping gear, and luggage they already had in the car so Becca would not notice.

Then, finally (and it was only nine o’clock), he drove back to the apartment where Becca was still asleep.